Falling Down The Stairs

Chapter Four

She called Marcus at 6 AM, expecting him to be asleep, but he was awake. She wanted to see the analysis of the tire marks, which Marcus promised her was done. She found that hard to believe, considering it would take a professional to properly evaluate it and they hadn't had the pictures for that long, but that didn't matter. She just wanted to make copies of her own. Sarah suspected that would be a problem. She'd considered asking for the autopsy, but he hadn't volunteered that report, so she suspected it wasn't ready, either. She'd find out when she arrived at the police station.

    Marcus was there waiting for her, drinking a thermos of coffee, despite it being close to ninety degrees at 730 in the morning.

    "Morning!" he said cheerfully.

    "How many of those you had?" Sarah said, nodding towards the thermos. He opened the door for her.

    "Somewhere short of all of them, somewhere above twenty-six," he said, and followed her inside.

    Angela Hernandez was working the front desk, as she had been the last time Sarah was here. Her eyes were red, and she wore glasses this time, and her hair was in a bun. She yawned as Sarah and Marcus walked up to her.

    "Little one keeping you up, Angie?" Marcus said,

    "Not so little anymore. Seventh birthday's in two weeks," Angela said.

    "Goodness," he said. He leaned in closer. "How are you?"

    Angie gave him a look, and then back to Sarah, and her face artificially softened.

    "I'm..." she said slowly. "I'm doing okay. It's been a long recovery, but considering Nick hit me with a bat, I'm doing pretty okay."

    Marcus nodded sagely. Sarah looked back and forth between the two of them. What the fuck was going on between these two? Were they performing for her benefit? And what in the world would they get from her knowing Angela was nearly killed by her ex-husband?

    "Anyway," Marcus said suddenly. "Let's get to work."

    "In here," Marcus said, opening the door to a conference room. Photos of the tire marks and another folder were laying on the table, which was a long, white wooden thing, with old swivel chairs dotted around it.

    "Is that the autopsy report?" Sarah said, pointing to the closed folder. Marcus shook his head.

    "Coroner hasn't finished yet," he said. "That's the tire mark analysis."

    "It's been three days," she said. "How did the tire mark analysis come back already but not the autopsy?"

    Marcus shrugged.

    She so badly wanted to tell him that she knew he was full of shit, but she didn't. She wanted as little disruption as possible, so that the town Hannah loved wouldn't be put into disarray. A fair and just thing to do, considering Sarah's past behavior.

    Okay, she thought. You're repeating yourself. Go do your job.

    "Can you get me a cup of coffee?" Sarah said. Marcus nodded.

    "Yeah, sure," he said, and left.

    She took out her phone, quick as she could, and started snapping photos of each page of the report. It was six pages long. When she was finished, she started reading it over. The tires were the fifth most common brand sold in the United States, the second most common in the south, and the most common in this region of the south. In short, the tire marks meant jack shit, according to this report.